Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Utah Mormons

Minstrel shows – mostly white performers in blackface singing “plantation songs” and telling stereotyped, racist “jokes” - were probably the most popular entertainment in the US in the last half of the nineteenth century, and Utah was no exception. Utah has long been a crossroads, from the overland trails to the first transcontinental railroad and interstate highways. Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, became a major railroad hub (Alexander and Allen; Arrington). Salt Lake, the capital and the largest city between Denver and California, was a regular stop for traveling theater troupes, including minstrel outfits. Mormons have a well-established theater and music tradition, and minstrel shows drew big crowds at the Salt Lake Theater, Walker Opera House, and other venues (Hicks 52). Callender’s Georgia Minstrels, the best-known troupe of “real” black performers, played the Salt Lake Theater in 1878 (Pyper 292). Callender sold out to J. H. Haverly, the most successful of all minstrel entrepreneurs. As part of his national and international minstrel empire, Haverly managed the Walker Opera House in Salt Lake City from 1882 to 1891 (Pyper 295; Toll 204-205).

Minstrelsy attracted mostly white audiences, particularly in a place like Salt Lake with a small black population. From its founding in 1847, Great Salt Lake City’s population was overwhelmingly white. The “pioneer company” of July in that year included three enslaved African American men: Hark Lay, Oscar Crosby, and Green Flake. African Americans could join the LDS Church but could not aspire to full membership; they were denied the priesthood and certain sacred practices (otherwise available to all "worthy" adult males) until 1978 (“Race and the Priesthood”). The territorial legislature legalized slavery of both Native Americans and African Americans; slavery only ended when Congress abolished it in all the territories in 1862. Relatively few white settlers brought enslaved people to Salt Lake, and very few African Americans lived there. In all of Utah Territory, only 118 African Americans were counted in the 1870 census, five years before the founding of the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute (later renamed "Westminster College"). The posting of the 24^th United States Infantry – “Colored” – to Fort Douglas on the eastern edge of the city in 1896 roughly doubled the black population. Like other northern American cities, de facto segregation governed the lives of black residents. Most African Americans worked in low-paying service jobs and, not surprisingly, it appears none of their children attended Westminster College until the middle of the twentieth century (Coleman).  

Some African Americans did patronize minstrel shows, however. On June 22, 1891, an African American man named Frederick Collins went to the Salt Lake Theater to see Thatcher’s Minstrels (see the poster in this gallery). George Thatcher was a veteran white performer who led several companies over the years. Collins bought a ticket for the main floor, but the ushers insisted that he move to the balcony. Collins sued on the basis of the 1875 Civil Rights Act, won his case, and was awarded $250 in damages (see “A Question of Color” in this gallery). Another local Black man, newspaper publisher/editor Julius Taylor, condemned blackface minstrelsy for its racist caricatures (see “Black Patti” in this gallery).

Despite the antagonism and often hostile rhetoric expressed between activist Mormons and non-Mormons (including the Presbyterians associated with Westminster College), white settlers in Utah shared a place atop the country’s racial hierarchy and a taste for blackface minstrelsy that spanned the religious divide. While the professional troupes began to decline in popularity after the turn of the twentieth century, amateur minstrel shows remained very popular. Latter-day Saints sometimes put on shows at a ward or stake level (local ecclesiastical units), and social organizations like the Elks and Shriners did as well (Hicks). As we see elsewhere in this exhibit, blackface “entertainment” remained alive and well in Utah, sometimes into the late twentieth century (for an example from the 1930s, see “Minstrels P.4” in this gallery). The next collection in this exhibit, “Confronting our Racist Past: Westminster College, Minstrelsy, and White Supremacist Narratives,” explores racist entertainment on campus.

~Jeff Nichols

WORKS CITED

Alexander, Thomas, and James B. Allen. Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City. Pruett Publishing Company, 1984.

Arrington, Leonard J. Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter‑day Saints, 1830‑1900. Harvard University Press, 1958.

Coleman, Ronald. “African Americans in Utah.” Utah History Encyclopedia,                                                https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/a/African_Americans.shtml. Accessed 19 March 2021.

Hicks, Michael. “Ministering Minstrels: Blackface Entertainment in Pioneer Utah.” Utah  Historical Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 1, Winter 1990, pp. 49‑63.

Pyper, George D. The Romance of an Old Playhouse. Revised edition. News Press, 1937.

“Race and the Priesthood.” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng. Accessed 19 March 2021.

Toll, Robert. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford University Press, 1977.

Additional resources:

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class 20^th edition. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Mueller, Max Perry. Race and the Making of the Mormon People. University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Reeve, W. Paul. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. Oxford University Press, 2015.